July 11, 2016 - Vesta’s Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat

Vesta’s Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat This may look like a rainbow-hued asteroid, but these brilliant colors were assigned to highlight subtle differences in Vesta’s surface composition. Material thrown out from impact craters—seen in red—is different from the surrounding material; likewise, green reveals an abundance of iron. Vesta is the second-most massive object in the asteroid belt and is the source of a large number of meteorites that have fallen to Earth. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft was launched in 2007 and entered orbit around Vesta five years ago this week. After spending a year orbiting Vesta, Dawn reignited its novel ion engine and departed for the dwarf planet Ceres, arriving in March 2015. It is the first spacecraft to successfully enter orbit around two different target worlds in our solar system.